@xbadchristianx

It wasn’t a formal feminist education that introduced me to the corrosive effects of patriarchy. It was crying with HIV-infected widows in India and listening to the stories of abandoned wives and mothers in Bolivia. It was knowing that my friend Jackie had to get a body guard for the first Sunday in which she preached at her church. It was receiving desperate emails from women whose husbands and pastors told them that submitting to abuse was part of their God-ordained role and who had nowhere else to turn because their church would shame them if they stepped forward and reported the abuse. It was marriages that struggled to function as hierarchies, when both husband and wife longed for a partnership. It was being told that “vagina” was the same as a swear word, so I best not use it in my book. It was being told by people in the Christian publishing industry that I shouldn...